All Not Gloom And Doom In `Bleak House`

December 01, 1985|By Clifford Terry, TV/Radio Critic.

Although he was an Englishman writing about the deplorable conditions of the 19th Century, Charles Dickens harbored for what many has become a 20th-Century American mind set: an abhorrence of lawyers and the law.

Dickens viewed members of the bar as Victorian vampires ``making hay of the grass which is their clients` flesh,`` and now ``Bleak House``--his 890-plus-page (and generally, one suspects, partiallyread) novel that attacked the corruption of the courts as well as the trampling of the underclass--has been taken on by ``Masterpiece Theatre`` as a compelling eight-part series

(beginning 9 p.m. Sunday on WTTW-Ch. 11).

The book and the adaptation (which is quite confusing for a while, but stay with it) deals particularly with the Court of Chancery, where disputed wills and estates were adjudicated--if one was lucky--and where Dickens himself served as a reporter. Being in Chancery, one character says, ``is like being roasted in a slow fire . . . being drowned by drops.`` Throughout the episodes, the badgering magistrates and attorneys--with their hoots and jeers, musty books and mustier minds--act like a combination of a crowd at the roller derby and members of a certain contemporary city council.

``Bleak House`` is concerned with the case of ``Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce,``

which has dragged on in Chancery for years. John Jarndyce (played by Denholm Elliott), explains that it was ``about a will--when it was about anything at all``--that the lawyers have ``twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.`` What`s more, the great size of the original fortune has been

``squandered away into such an infernal country dance of fees and costs and nonsense and corruption that was never dreamed in the wildest visions of a witch`s sabbath.``

Jarndyce, it soon becomes evident, is a kind and moral man, who has taken in as his wards the three orphan/claimants to the will--distant cousins Richard Carstone (Philip Frank) and Ada Clare (Lucy Hornak) and governess Esther Summerson (Suzanne Burden), who is carrying around a mysterious background. The bachelor guardian vows that he will protect his wards from the maw of Chancery as best he can, but in one case at least, ultimately fails.

Other than the Dickensian blistering of the courts system, a second storyline involves the death, in a seedy London warehouse, of a lodger who had written what is apparently a valuable affidavit, and the efforts of several persons to piece together his secrets--a group that includes the haughty Lady Dedlock (Diana Rigg)), wife of the wealthy, considerably older Sir Leicester

(Robin Bailey) and harborer of still-another shadowy past.

The BBC`s Pound Sterling2.8 million (almost $4 million) production was directed by Ross Devenish, a South African expatriate who has made three films with Athol Fugard, and was adapted by Arthur Hopcraft (``Hard Times,``

``Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy``), who has said he undoubtedly will

``inflame`` Dickens buffs for such omissions as the comic characters, the Jellybys and the Turveydrops. Able support has been provided by

cinematographer/lighting expert Kenneth MacMillan, who has made striking use of ``Miami Vice``-likeantithetical grays and browns, eerily set off by the saffron light from flickering lamps and candles, and has dramatically contrasted the fog and mud and stench of the city with the clean morning lushness and mauve twilight of the country. One of the producers was John Harris (``I, Claudius``).

It should be said that despite the title and the theme, all is not gloom and doom, crones and urchins (such as Miss Flite, the mad ``birdwoman``;

Krook, the cackling bag-and-bone merchant; and Jo, the boy who sweeps manure from street crossings). There is, indeed, a considerable amount of romance and intrigue, dry and rowdy humor, along with the arrivals and departures of the various fringe characters with the author`s characteristic names: Mr. Guppy, Mr. Smallweed, Mrs. Pardiggle, Inspector Bucket and (my own favorite) Phil Squod.

The title, in fact, is somewhat ironic, since the Hertfordshire home of John Jarndyce is considerably bright and airy, in contrast with the murky desolation of the London streets. ``Bleak House,`` the owner rather graphically explains to the governess, was named by his great-uncle, who had fatally shot himself--still another victim of Chancery. (``(The house) left the signs of his misery on it . . . the brain seemed to have been blown out of the house, too . . . shattered . . . . ``)

In the pivotal role of the lovely and shy, strong and saintly Esther, Suzanne Burden achieves a superb performance, and Elliott is excellent as the lonely, weary Jarndyce who, during fits of brooding, retreats to his house

``Growlery.`` And as the ``transcendent`` Lady Dedlock, Rigg--who has shown her versatility in television roles from Emma Peel on ``The Avengers``

to Regan in Olivier`s ``King Lear``--conveys a smouldering sensuality and ultimately destructive vulnerability.

The supporting cast is outstanding, especially T.P. McKenna as Harold Skimpole, the seemingly charming, flamboyant freeloader and ``child in the world`` who turns out to be a self-serving snake, and Peter Vaughan as Tulkinghorn, the Dedlock family lawyer and the major villain in the piece. A calculating bully who holds Lady Dedlock`s secret like a Damoclean sword, he is ``a slow, torturing kind of man`` with ``a passion for other people`s fears.``

But the biggest scoundrels in ``Bleak House`` are really all the Tulkinghorns and the profession they follow. To Charles Dickens, a lawyer was a man who ``lives by trouble`` and ``feeds it so it may feed him.``

``Was there,`` one of his characters asks, ``ever anything more troublesome in this world than the law?``